Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
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It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.
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For a hundred years I breathe and live, the flower of beauty and the bread of kindness. I am your friendly shade in the noonday heat of summer, and I stand pencilled against the winter twilight, a silhouette for dreams. At dawning in the spring I am filled with song, the host to a thousand birds, and I decorate the autumn with pageantry and colour. Then comes the woodsman with his axe. And still I serve. I am the timber that builds your boat; the rafters of your cathedrals; the choirstalls of your church enriched by the magic of the carver's fingers. I am the beam that holds your house; the door of your homestead, and the lintel too. I am the handle of your hoe; the wood of your cradle; the bed on which you lie; the board of your table and the board for your bread. When I am living, harm me not. When I am dead, respect me and use me kindly.
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Dear Signore Direttore,
Now I am a-tella you a story wot I was a-treated at your hotella.
I am a-comma from Roma as tourist to London an stay as a-younga cristan man at your hotella.
When I comma in my room I see there is no shit in my bed - how can I sleep whit no shit i my bed? So I calla down to the receptione and tella: 'I wanta shit'. They tella me: 'Go to toilet'. I say: 'No,no I wanta shit in my bed'. They say: 'You better not shit in your bed, you sonna-wa-bitch'. What is sonna-wa-bitch?
I go down for breakfast into restorante. I order bacon and egga and two pissis of toast. I getta only one piss of toast. I tella waitress, and point at toast: 'I wanta piss'. She tella me: 'Go to toilet'. I say: 'I wata piss on my plate'. She then say to me: 'You'd bloody not piss on the plate, you sonna-wa-bitch'.
That is the second person who do not even know me calla me 'sonna-wa-bitch', an why is your staff replying 'Go to toilet', is that a modern tella? I do no understand, Please tella me!
Later I go for dinner in your restorante. Spoon and knife is laid out, but no fock. I tella waitress: 'I wanta fock'. And she tella me: 'Sure, everyone wanta fock'. I say: 'No,no you dont understanda me, I wanta fock on the table'. She tella me: So you sonna-wa-bitch wanta fock on the table? Get your ass out of here!
How comma this cristian hotel tella the guest in such bad manner?
So I go to receptioneand ask for bill, I no wanta stay in this hotel no more. When I have paid the a-billa the portier say to me: 'Thank you and piss on you'. I say: 'Piss on you too, you sonna-wa-bitch, I go back to Italy'.
Direttore, I never gonna stay in your hotella no more, you sonna-wa-bitch.
Sincerely
Dicci Elgre
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Religion is like going out to dinner with friends. Everyone may order something different, but everyone can still sit at the same table.
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What the hell is nostalgia doing in a science-fiction film? With the whole universe and all the future to play in, Lucas took his marvelous toys and crawled under the fringed cloth on the parlor table, back into a nice safe hide hole, along with Flash Gordon and the Cowardly Lion and Luke Skywalker and the Flying Aces and the Hitler Jugend. If there's a message there, I don't think I want to hear it.
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It is possible to regulate watercourses over any given distance without embankment works; to transport timber and other materials, even when heavier than water, for example ore, stones, etc., down the centre of such water-courses; to raise the height of the water table in the surrounding countryside and to endow the water with all those elements necessary for the prevailing vegetation. Furthermore it is possible in this way to render timber and other such materials non-inflammable and rot resistant; to produce drinking and spa-water for man, beast and soil of any desired composition and performance artificially, but in the way that it occurs in Nature; to raise water in a vertical pipe without pumping devices; to produce any amount of electricity and radiant energy almost without cost; to raise soil quality and to heal cancer, tuberculosis and a variety of nervous disorders... the practical implementation of this ... would without doubt signify a complete reorientation in all areas of science and technology.
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All great change in America begins at the dinner table.
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Boy you really missed the boat. I'll make it simple, so's even fuckin you can understand. Papa God growed us up till we could wear long pants; then he licensed his name to dollar bills, left some car keys on the table, and got the fuck outta town'. Water rushes to his eye-holes. 'Dont be lookin up at no sky for help. Look down here, at us twisted dreamers'. He takes hold of my shoulders, spins me around, and punches me towards the mirror on the wall. 'You're the God. Take responsibility. Exercise your power
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When by the Ruins oft I past My sorrowing eyes aside did cast And here and there the places spy Where oft I sate and long did lie. Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest, There lay that store I counted best, My pleasant things in ashes lie And them behold no more shall I. Under the roof no guest shall sit, Nor at thy Table eat a bit. No pleasant talk shall 'ere be told Nor things recounted done of old. No Candle 'ere shall shine in Thee, Nor bridegroom's voice ere heard shall bee. In silence ever shalt thou lie.
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A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
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It’s cold in the room, Mommy. It’s cold and all I have to wear is a yucky-green smock that matches the yucky-green walls. All the walls are cold, the metal table is cold, and the doctor’s fingers are cold as they hold my hand and tell me not to worry. But I’m worried, mommy. The doctors say that I might not wake up…they’re saying that I have a ninety percent chance of dieing, and I’m scared: I don’t want to go away, mommy; I don’t want to leave you behind. There’s a big clock on the wall, and it says it’s 3:15 in the afternoon. Ms. Loughlin just let class out for the day…Billy and Jeff are probably wrestling just outside the classroom, waiting for their daddies to pick them up so they can go home and eat dinner and do their homework and sleep. I wish I was there, mommy…I wish I was anywhere but here. I’m crying, mommy. I promised you I wouldn’t, but I’m crying and I can’t stop. The doctors are going to give me the medicine now to make me sleep so I don’t feel anything, so you won’t have to worry about me hurting anymore. But mommy, they said they had to take Teddy from me…they had to give him to you…mommy, please, hold him, hold him, and promise me, mommy, promise me if I don’t wake up you’ll keep him for me: he’s going to miss me a lot, and he’ll need someone to hug. And mommy… Goodbye, mommy.
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But what Kezia liked more than anything, what she liked frightfully, was the lamp. It stood in the middle of the dining-room table, an exquisite little amber lamp with a white globe. It was filled all ready for lighting, though, of course, you couldn't light it. But there was something inside that looked like oil and moved when you shook it. The father and mother dolls, who sprawled very stiff as though they had fainted in the drawing-room, and their two little children asleep upstairs, were really too big for the doll's house. They didn't look as though they belonged. But the lamp was perfect. It seemed to smile at Kezia, to say, 'I live here.' The lamp was real.
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Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.
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'He [the truly ethical man] breaks no leaf from the tree, plucks no flower, is careful to crush no insect with his feet. When he works by his lamp in the summer evening, he prefers to keep his window shut and to breathe the stifling air rather than to see insect after insect falling on his table with singed wings. If after a rain he is walking on the road and sees an earthworm gone astray, he remembers it will dry up in the sun if it does not get back in time to the earth into which it can burrow, and helps it from the fatal stones into the grass. If he comes upon an insect fallen into a puddle, he takes time to save it by extending a leaf or a stalk to it. He is not afraid of being laughed at as sentimental. It is the fate of every truth to be ridiculed before it is recognized. It was once considered stupid to think colored men were really human and must be treated humanely. The time is coming when people will be amazed that it took so long for mankind to recognize that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with ethics.'
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Well, waking up hungover and snuggled up in bed with the boss's 19-yr-old daughter and having to walk out of the house past his surprised ass at the breakfast table doesn't do wonders for your career.
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. . there is one other thought closely allied to this. What of our duties to our fellow-men? And here I appeal particularly to my own sex, because women are supposed to be rather the standard in the community of refinement, of gentleness, of compassion, of tenderness, of purity. But no one can eat the flesh of a slaughtered animal without having used the hand of a man as slaughterer. Suppose that we had to kill for ourselves the creatures whose bodies we would fain have upon our table, is there one woman in a hundred who would go to the slaughterhouse to slay the bullock, the calf, the sheep or the pig? . . . But if we could not do it, nor see it done; if we are so refined that we cannot allow close contact between ourselves and the butchers who furnish this food; if we feel that they are so coarsened by their trade that their very bodies are made repulsive by the constant contact of the blood with which they must be continually besmirched; if we recognize the physical coarseness which results inevitably from such contact, dare we call ourselves refined if we purchase our refinement by the brutalization of others, and demand that some should be brutal in order that we may eat the results of their brutality? We are not free from the brutalizing results of that trade simply because we take no direct part in it.
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And that is certainly an option that is on the table, and if Iran does not change its behavior and get back to the negotiating table, it is an option that is available to the international community.
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At one point, I thought that maybe humor was the best way to deal with it. I figured maybe I should get 12 old Jewish comedians, you know, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, to sit around a table and have them riff off 'The Protocols.
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Be able to blow out a dinner candle without sending wax flying across the table.
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Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shores our bed and eats at our own table.
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You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.
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At a round table there is no dispute about place.
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Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American.
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No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.
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As to Don Juan, confess that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? It may be profligate, but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? in a vis a vis? on a table? and under it?
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To come to the table with that $5 co-pay is not negotiating in good faith.
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Sir Walter, being strangely surprised and put out of his countenance at so great a table, gives his son a damned blow over the face. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face the gentleman that sat next to him and said Box about: twill come to my father anon.
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Do the days work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but dont be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but dont be a demagogue. Dont hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Dont hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Dont expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Dont hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.
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It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
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